Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1511356
11 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 NOVEMBER 2023 64% CLAIM THERE IS BULLYING AT THE WORKPLACE 40% HAVING EXPERIENCED BULLYING AT WORK IN THE PAST YEAR 9% HAD ENGAGED IN SELF HARM, SUICIDAL THINKING OR BEHAVIOUR WITH OF WHICH View the nationwide research study on Bullying & Ostracism at the Workplace in Malta. Bullying affects personal and social lives. www.bbrave.org.mt Get informed. ney General, the Police Com- missioner and the Registrar Criminal Courts and Tribunals, Schembri demanded that the phone be expunged from the evidence in the case against him, suggesting that there was a sinister motive behind what he described as the misplacing and subsequent discovery of his phone. The application was filed a few weeks after the magistrate presiding over the compilation of evidence, Donatella Frendo Dimech, had dictated a strong- ly worded note, slamming the "shameful and embarrassing" state of the strong room where evidence is preserved in court and the manner in which it is maintained as "absolute aban- donment," with court staff hav- ing to buy sticky tape to seal evidence boxes themselves and describing laptops covered in mould. The state in which evidence is preserved can make or break a case, the magistrate stressed, as she called upon the Ministry for Justice to immediately take the necessary steps to address the problem. Schembri's lawyers see an op- portunity But it would appear that Schembri's lawyers are now trying to conflate the magis- trate's valid concerns with the less likely claim that Schembri's physical phone had been mis- placed or tampered with whilst in court custody. Doubt has already been cast on that claim in the written submissions made by the regis- trar of Criminal Courts and Tri- bunals in a Constitutional case filed by Schembri Lawyer Vanessa Grech, repre- senting the registrar, told Mr. Justice Mark Simiana, presiding over the Constitutional case, that it was not true that the ex- hibit in question -Keith Schem- bri's mobile phone- had been lost, misplaced or displaced from the court's strongroom where it was originally depos- ited. Furthermore, she explained, the court expert Keith Cutajar had only exhibited the data ex- tracted from a number of devic- es – which did not in any case include Keith Schembri's phone – together with his report on that data. Those devices were then formally, not physically, exhibited in the Zenith money laundering case. Keith Schembri's mobile phone was exhibited in separate criminal proceedings against him and had been examined by court expert Martin Bajada, who had since tendered his re- port together with a hard drive containing the extracted data to the inquiring magistrate. On the subject of the magis- trate's criticism of the state in which the exhibits were stored, Grech stressed that although the exhibits had not been placed on shelves due to their sheer number, they were "all cata- logued and easily traceable." Mr Justice Simiana rejected Schembri's requests to prevent the next sitting in the compila- tion of evidence to be brought forward to Friday, ruling that he could not see how the disap- pearance or reappearance of the phone could prejudice Schem- bri's rights, as there was noth- ing stopping the experts from testifying again in the criminal proceedings, and pointing out that no evaluation of evidence takes place during the compila- tion stage anyway. When the compilation pro- ceedings continued on Friday, Magistrate Frendo Dimech confirmed that all the electron- ic equipment, including Schem- bri's seized mobile phones, had been physically exhibited in Ju- ly 2023 and handed over to the court's exhibits officer three days later, for safekeeping. All of the exhibits relating to Keith Schembri had "remained in the possession and the exclu- sive, uninterrupted, custody of that official," said the court. The compilation of evidence continues later this month. 'shameful' state of evidence strong room Court Services Agency CEO Eunice Grech Fiorini